Who You Will Always Be
by queerfemme
Summary: What if Regina hadn't poofed away after fighting with Emma in The Cricket Game? A very Swan Queen alternate episode, in which Regina shows Emma her alibi and the two unite to stop Cora. Emma poses as Regina in a desperate attempt to save her, but after dealing with Cora, Emma is the one who needs saving. Rated M for sexyfuntimes.
1. Chapter 1

"And who you will always be." The younger woman's words slammed into Regina's very soul, the fury in the blonde's eyes only barely masking the tumult of her shattered heart. The former Queen watched her entire world crumble before her very eyes as her Savior seethed, tainted memories of their frenzied, carnally erotic reunion pounding relentlessly through them both. Regina was drowning in the air she was trying to breathe, unable to fathom what it was the outraged young woman thought she saw, unable and unwilling to imagine returning to a life in which Emma Swan and Henry had no faith in her, didn't protect her. Didn't invite her. Didn't love her.

The heartshattered women locked eyes, Emma already regretting her complete loss of control in yelling at the woman she's spent so much time protecting lately. But watching her squeeze Archie's life out of him... it was the ultimate betrayal of their son, of Emma's own trust, of this... whatever it was that had grown like a terrified, passionate, unrepentant and irrepressible organism between Evil Queen and Savior.

_"You don't want to stay for a piece?" ... "Em, I'm... I'm sorry."_

The older woman was reminded widely of apologizing to someone else, so many years and lifetimes ago.

_"I'm sorry I snapped at you."_

_"I shouldn't have snapped at you."_

Daniel and Emma. Her True Love (s?).

Emma had forgiven her the night before. Maybe - just maybe - she would show faith in the nearly broken woman yet again. She took a deep breath of air that tasted like poison, willing herself to look into fiery green eyes, raw yet again with the wild pain of abandonment, of betrayal. The Evil Queen drew a deep breath into trembling lungs.

"Ms. Swan." She said it softly, but watched another layer of furious protection construct itself behind her secret lover's eyes. She tried again.

"_Emma_," softly, so that Snow and Charming had to lean closer to hear. She never wanted them to see her desperate like this, but her son was worth it to her. _So is their daughter_, she forced herself to admit to herself. A flicker of hope show through the younger woman's eyes when Regina used her first name. Somewhat steadied by that, Regina pressed on.

"Please. I'm sorry. I - I lost my temper. I don't want to lose Henry. You - you know how that feels. Please forgive me. I - I don't know how you saw what you saw, but please, give me the chance to show you what _I _remember of last night."

There was a long pause during which Emma's eyes softened with the buoyancy of hope, of faith. If love. Her voice, however, remained cold, skeptical, hardened.

"How?"

Regina wasn't offended by the tone or by the question: she knew too much about protecting her heart from those most likely to melt it with the fires of their own passions.

"Magic."

* * *

The two set off for Gold's office alone. Regina had refused - almost petulantly, Emma noted with wounded affection, which was slowly, hopefully, skeptically creeping back into her, her willingness to believe in the brunette's innocence growing with each step they took - to allow Snow and Charming to witness her memories. Surely, she had had enough of her dignity stripped from her at their hands to last several lifetimes, she had argued.

Emma had reddened at her choice of words, remembering that merely a couple dozen hours ago, Regina had stripped for her in the throes of inflamed passion, charged with the vigor from their prolonged separation and the changes they had both made in their time apart: Regina, struggling to redeem herself, to let love in; Emma, being humbled by her experiences in the Enchanted Forest and learning so much more about Regina's past and pains, through Cora; both, being forced to deal with how profoundly their separation impacted them. Emma tried not to think about all that right then, nor about the fact that the two women had absently fallen into perfect step with each other.

As the bell on Gold's door jangled, Regina's fears returned fully, having been temporarily soothed by the blonde's silent companionship on their way to the shop.

"Gold," Emma called into the back room moments before the man emerged, polishing a necklace with an old cloth.

"Ah, Ms. Swan. You've apprehended the murderer, I see. If you're coming to me about how best to keep her at bay, I'm afraid - "

"We have to prove her guilty first." Gold blinked as Regina suppressed a smirk, silently reveling in Emma's renewed defense of her.

"Ms. Swan, merely an hour ago, you watched - "

"I know," Emma cut in. "And now I want to watch Regina's side of the story. So give me that dream catcher thing so we can get this over with."

"And my incentive for doing so is - "

"You don't want our son to be devastated if there's no real reason to be, do you? Surely you owe him one after risking his life with that bullshit stunt you pulled with the True Love potion, Gold."

The man's eyes narrowed slightly, but he had no choice intention of arguing with the blonde; he had deep affection for Henry, given his intimate connection with Bae. He silently handed Emma the dream catcher, glaring at Regina as he did so.

Regina spoke for the first time since she had thanked Emma when they set off for the shop:

_"Thank you." _

_"Don't thank me yet, Regina: if you're lying to me, I swear - "_

_"I'm not."_

"My memories are for the Sheriff's eyes only, Gold."

"Oh, dearie, but you're forgetting. This is the second chance - the second test, if you will - that I'm giving you to prove that you can change. I don't often give second chances. You're in no position to set conditions."

Emma stepped into the man's space. "She may not be, but I am. Let me see her memories alone, Gold."

"You see them with me here or you don't see them at all, Ms. Swan. My word is final and the choice is yours."

* * *

Emma found that magic flowed much easier from the inner fibers of her being to the tips of her fingers when she was in Regina's presence. The older woman was looking on, clearly torn between mortified humiliation and an almost adoring, sexual fascination and excitement at the prospect of watching her down-low lover creating magic.

The inexperienced woman stared deeply into the dream catches, eyes pouring her soul into it, willing Regina's night after she left the welcome-home party to come into view. Emma squinted as she watched and felt the tears stinging Regina's eyes as she approached the door to her empty house, dropping the keys because her hands were trembling so hard. The memory faltered a little as Emma gently cast the dream catcher over Regina's body once more, eliciting more memories, hearing her heels click into her deserted foyer, saw her lover's shaking hands skip the cider and go straight for the vodka, stumbling up to Henry's empty room, breaking her own rules as she kicked her heels off on the stairs, tripping on the top step as grief and alcohol - she had already downed half a large glass of vodka - ravaged her normally graceful body's ability to function.

Emma blinked away her own tears and tried to steady her own shaking hands as she watched Regina stumble into Henry's room, struggling not to collapse on the threshold, sobbing throatily as she inhaled his scent and tasted his childhood. She crumpled like used paper onto his bed and grabbed futilely at his pillow, sobs wracking the entire bed and shaking the very foundations of her soul. Emma had no idea how the entire town had not felt her convulsions.

Emma watched the hours go by in minutes, and she knew from some magical sort of intuition that the time of Archie's murder was being played before her eyes. The brunette had stumbled her way into her own bedroom. Mascara covered Regina's face as she shakily settled onto her bed, the bitterness of being empty and alone coursing through her veins, as essential to her being as blood.

Emma felt the Regina of the present time, standing in Gold's shop, shift with extreme discomfort as the Regina of last night roughly unbuttoned and unzipped her pants, thrusting a single, trembling hand into the warm space between her legs, fingers smashing circles onto her lonely, comfort-needing clit. Her breath became more ragged, and a heady moan reached the witnesses' ears: "_Emma_."

The woman in question abruptly broke the magical link between herself and the dream catcher, her face flushed and her heart about to burst out of her chest in relief, arousal, and an intense feeling of pride, both in Regina that she had kept her word, and in herself, that the brunette had masturbated to thinking about her. The heartbreak of watching Regina so desperate and alone was something Emma forced to the side, determined to never let her feel that way again.

"Well, that was certainly... ah... _entertaining_," Gold piped up, a wicked smile set on his face. "Though I must say, I'm surprised you didn't wish to see more, Sheriff."

"Not a word about this, Gold, beyond declaring the fact that we know she's innocent, or I swear I will make your life a living hell." Emma knew how mortified Regina must be, and realized with a jolt why she had tried to insist that Gold not be present while the Savior perused her memories. Emma knew what an enormous step this was for Regina, knew that she would normally never willingly expose herself in the throes of such self-despair and self-intimacy, to anyone, least of all Gold - who would take great pleasure in not only mocking her mercilessly, but would likely exploit this as a weakness when it was convenient for him to do so - or to Emma, to whom the memories amounted to an admission of love, or at the very least, intense desire.

Gold must have felt the heat of ferocity behind Emma's demand, for her uncharacteristically backed down and changed the subject. Regina, still tense and lipstick red in the face, relaxed slightly behind Emma.

"Regardless of Regina's memories of the night, we still have the other set of memories to explain. What do you imagine explains what Mr. Hopper's dog witnessed? Memories don't like, Ms. Swan."

"Which means Regina's don't, either, Gold." This time, Regina didn't bother to hide her smile at Emma's defense of her.

Rumpelstiltskin persisted. "And so the question remains - "

"Cora." Emma's voice was low, tense. Frightened.

"_What_?" Dually shocked voices rang in Emma's ears.

"She posed as Lancelot and fooled everyone; Mary Margaret knew Lancelot well, and Cora still tricked her. No offense to Pongo, but it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think that Cora could make herself look like Regina and fool him, too."

A long, tense silence.

"But then... she's here. In Storybrooke." Regina looked for all the world like a woman about to break with fear and grief, held together by an elegant layer of makeup, the saline from her tears, and the soft, tender touch of Emma's Swan's hand just above her elbow.

"Regina," Emma said softly as Gold nervously puttered about, gathering and mixing fluids and powders that Emma didn't recognize or particularly care about at the moment.

"You need to let me protect you, Regina. Please."

Regina scoffed, pulling her arm away from Emma's, struggling desperately to settle her face into the devil-may-care expression she had honed over the long, lonely years. Emma's heart pounded wildly and her heart shattered into impossibly tiny shards, watching such exquisite pain in battle to the death on the face, in the eyes, of such an exquisitely passionate woman.

Regina recoiled from Emma's touch. "_Protect_ me? Ms. Swan, the magic you have is _nothing_ against my mother, and forgive me for saying so, but it was mere good fortune that you and Snow escaped with your lives to begin with!"

"There's one thing more powerful than magic, Regina." Emma's voice was breathless and steadily low, so much so that Regina swore she had heard her wrong. Surely the younger woman wasn't saying... _No. Impossible_. _But that look in her eyes..._

"I know I can protect you if you let me." Regina searched the younger woman's green orbs for an ulterior motive as Gold none-too-subtly fought a knowing smirk.

"How?" Regina asked, her voice prickly with anguish and maybe - just maybe - a little bit of hope.

"Cora's hiding. She obviously thinks we don't know she's here. She wants you broken, Regina." She squinted sympathetically as she spoke, reaching her hand out again to touch the older woman's arm. Regina found that she couldn't shrug the touch off if she wanted to. She was numbly shocked to find that she didn't want to.

"So we fight her in two ways," Emma continued. "One, I'm not gonna let you break. Two, we make her think you have. She'll think she's winning, but we'll have the advantage: we can plan against her and she'll have no idea. We can do this, Regina."

Regina breathed slowly, heavily, fighting to keep oxygen in her brain, which was hazily spinning like a chunk of ice in the depths of a nebula, much like the one she was absorbed by in the blonde's eyes.

"And... and your parents, the town... you may believe me, Ms. Swan, but unless you plan to stage my very public humiliation by allowing... allowing everyone to see what you've seen... I have a hard time accepting that anyone else will believe me."

"But they'll believe me, and I'll protect you against anyone that doesn't. But remember, Regina: Cora has to think she's won. So the fewer who knew the truth, the better. I'll make my parents believe the truth. I know Henry will. And when all this is over, I'm not gonna let anyone hurt you again."

Emma exhaled heavily, eyes flitting anywhere but Regina's face. She was used to playing her cards much closer to her chest, but there was something in the wildness, the broken vulnerability, in the eyes of her son's other mother - no matter what she'd yelled in the midst of her own heartbreak, Regina would always be that, and so much more - that made her want to dissolve her own walls and embrace the older woman's damage with her own.

Regina, entranced by this woman who was so willing - even eager - to stick by her when no one else wanted to or would, took an almost shy step forward, full lips parting slightly, warm breath caressing Emma's cheeks. The younger woman smiled softly at her. "Okay?" she whispered. Regina nodded silently, allowing Emma to slip tentative hands around her waist.

Gold cleared his throat. Emma jumped then shifted so that she could face Gold while still holding the haunted, hunted brunette.

"Go explain things to your boy and bring him to me directly." He dangled a crystalline vial, half full of sparkling pink liquid, up between two fingers. "He needs to drink this so that Cora's magic shan't hurt him: a similar concoction to that which protected Snow White from you, dearie."

The women nodded their appreciation as Regina turned her face to Emma, an almost playful smile dancing in her deep chocolate eyes. "We'll need to magic ourselves there and back so that Cora won't be aware of our interaction with Henry. Would you like to transport us there, Ms. Swan?" She said this flirtatiously. "You do have magic, after all."

Emma blinked rapidly, mouth unraveling down to her toes. "Oh, I - I don't know how to - I can't - "

"Oh, but you can, Ms. Swan," Gold interjected. "I think you'll find yourself capable of much more than you know. Let Ms. Mills guide you. It seems your connection is - " he paused to give a classically Rumpelstiltskin giggle - "_powerful_."

Regina rolled her eyes at him, but raised her eyebrow at Emma questioningly. Hopefully.

"What if I screw it up, poof us right to wherever Cora's hiding?"

Despite - and perhaps because of - the severity of the situation, Regina found Emma's flash on insecurity endearing and frankly adorable. She smiled gently.

"I'll be with you to guide you, should you need it." She captured Emma's eyes and lowered her voice sensually, oozing with passionate meaning. "I'm not gonna let anything hurt you."

Rumpelstiltskin stared at the women silently over the brims of his various vials and jars, taking in the softness of Regina's voice as she talked Emma through the first steps of using magic. He marveled at the evident changes in the woman, in her renewed vulnerability, in the tenderness in her eyes as her gaze lingered on the blonde always for several moments too long. For her part, Ms. Swan seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this new - or should he say, old - Regina. Perhaps Henry's childish hopes had been on target after all: Cora or no, it seemed the Savior would refuse to be the Evil Queen's happy ending, gallantly insisting, instead, on being her beginning of joy.


	2. Chapter 2

"I did it!"

Regina smiled at Emma's success and enthusiasm, but wiped her face clean of admiration and pride before the blonde turned her exhilarated face towards hers. She cocked a practiced eyebrow.

"Very nice, dear, but perhaps next time your death grip on my hand won't be quite so painful."

Emma jerked her hand out of Regina's, having forgotten that they'd been holding hands while Emma poofed them from Gold's office into the empty living room of Mary Margaret's apartment. Overcome by the rush of magicking them safely halfway across town, the utter relief of finding out that Regina hadn't lied to her and hadn't killed Archie, and the desperate heat that was threatening to drip down her legs with the knowledge that the former Queen had breathed her name while masturbating, it was Emma's turn to raise a cocky eyebrow.

She stepped into Regina's space, breath tantalizing the older woman. Tongues flitted out to moisten lips as Emma breathed, eyes not leaving Regina's, "Oh, so there'll be a _next time_ we hold hands, _Your Majesty_?" Her eyes danced with promise and her breath hitched with barely contained desire.

Brown disappeared from Regina's chocolate eyes as they blackened with the keenness of her arousal. Before she could answer, they heard a clambering outside and jumped apart. Henry came bounding in the door, backpack already half-off, accompanied by stricken-looking grandparents.

"_Mom!_" Henry exclaimed loudly, his backpack hitting the floor as her rushed forward. Regina cast her eyes down, trying desperately to keep them dry: the last time she'd heard him shout like that, it was Emma's arms he had run into, not hers.

She gasped with soft surprise, then, as she felt his firm, fluffy little body rocket into her midsection. She raised shocked hands to put around him. Emma beamed a glowing smile as she put one hand on Henry's shoulder and one on the only part of Regina's waist that Henry wasn't attached to.

Henry stayed connected to Regina but lifted his head. "What's wrong? Something's up, I can tell, but Mary Margaret and Gramps won't tell me. They said you wanted to," he finished, turning his head to Emma, whose smile had vanished.

Snow looked shocked and mildly horrified to see Regina in her living room. "Yes, Emma, I think you owe us all an explanation," she said slowly.

The Savior sighed deeply. She locked eyes with Regina over Henry's head. Archie was dead, and Cora was in Storybrooke. She hadn't the faintest idea where to begin telling her son. "Help me," she mouthed, almost desperately, at the boy's other mother. To her slight surprise, there was no sense of triumph in the older woman's eyes: trying to change she may be, but Emma had still half-expected Regina to relish Emma's lack of parental know-how. She didn't.

"Henry," the brunette said softly, not missing a beat, taking him by the shoulders and removing his jacket, gently guiding him to a chair. "Honey, something terrible has happened. I'm here - Emma and I are both here -and we're all going to get through it." She hesitated and gave Emma the most fleeting of glances. She took Henry's hands. "Together."

* * *

Henry had shed tears, shouted his denial, whined in agony, asked questions, sobbed, clung to both of his mothers as though they were about to disappear, and sobbed some more. Emma had been helpful - "I loved Archie too, kid, but he'd tell us to remember the good times, right?" - but she had been deeply moved by Regina's soothing ability to always seem to know just how to calm Henry, just how to comfort him.

Regina, for her part, was impressed deeply by Emma's patience and her honesty, her maturity and her sensitivity. She found against her will that they made a good team, one always stepping in when the other was at a loss for words or had too many tears in her throat to speak.

Snow White, looking on, tried not to think too much about how in tune her daughter and the Evil Queen seemed.

* * *

"What do you mean it was _Cora_?" Snow exploded. "Emma, you _saw_ - "

Emma sprang up abruptly from where she and Regina had been kneeling next to Henry, grabbed her mother by the elbow, and led her and Charming deeper into the kitchen, whispering forcefully as Regina continued to explain matters to Henry.

"I know what I saw, but I also know what Regina is capable of, and I saw Regina's memories: she didn't do it. Her memories weren't fake, and no, I'm not going to tell you what they are. I'm not asking you to trust Regina, but I'm asking you to trust me. She didn't do it: it was Cora. And Regina's going to help us stop her. I've got a plan."

Snow stared at her daughter unblinkingly. James, after several failed attempts to form a sentence, asked, "So, what is this plan?"

"Yeah, Emma, what's the plan?" Henry, eyes still red, but relatively dry, had appeared at her side. Regina stayed back, several feet away from the family, hands awkwardly in her dark jacket pockets. Emma gestured for her to come closer, but Regina shook her head with the barest of movements, heartbreak and fear back in her eyes.

Emma sighed and looked down at Henry. "We can't let Cora know we're onto her, kid. That means we have to let everyone else think Regina's guilty. We have to pretend we think your mom did it, Henry, and we have to do a really good job at making everyone - especially Cora - believe that we think it was Regina. And when Cora thinks Regina's hurt enough to take her side, she's gonna go to her. But it won't be Regina she'll be talking with."

Emma's words were met by three confused stares and one slightly panicked, somewhat enraged, "Emma, don't you _dare_ - "

The Sheriff turned to face the former mayor, her face set. "But I _do_ dare, Regina. You know she'll try to kill you when you resist her too much. We can't let that happen. You can teach me how to do that chameleon thing she does, make her think I'm you. And if she thinks I'm you... I'll be fine, Regina, because she can't take my heart. I know you, I know I can act like you enough to pull it off. I just need you to tell me everything you can about you and her if we wanna give this thing its best shot at working."

"And what makes you think that _I'm_ alright with this plan?" Regina stepped into Emma's space aggressively as Henry gulped and Snow studied the fierce determination in Emma's eyes. "Me sitting, _hiding_, somewhere while you pose as me and expose yourself to my mother's wrath? What makes you think she hasn't found a way to compensate, to succeed in taking your heart? I will _not_ have you risking your life like that for me, Emma Swan. I won't."

The women's breaths danced together between their lips as Regina's protectiveness burst through Emma's heart with the force of a long dormant volcano. She took a deep, steadying breath, fighting the absurd impulse to kiss the older woman into submission.

"I understand I'm asking a lot of you. I know it won't be easy t o tell me everything I'll need to know or for you to wait on the sidelines. I get it. And if you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. But we need to sort this out quickly, Regina: we need to get Henry to Gold's and then we need to start whatever it is you decide to do. I'm willing to take the risk if you don't have any other ideas and are willing to be strong enough to trust me and wait it out." She lowered her voice. "Henry can afford to lose me, but he need you. You raised him, you know him, you love him. He can't lose you."

"And I can't lose _you_." The words that slipped from the brunette's lips were so broken, so soft, that Emma swore she imagined them. Unsure of what Regina had actually said, she simply put her hands gently on Regina's forearms.

"If we do this right, Cora won't suspect a thing. My magic will throw her off when she tries to take my heart - and she will - and then we can use that ink Gold told Henry about. Please, Regina. It's the best plan we've got. We just have to act like we hate you for a while, to convince her we think you did it. I think we've fought enough to pull that one off, don't you?"

Regina forced a smile and stepped out of Emma's space, but found, frustrated, that she couldn't escape the younger woman's aura. She nodded her consent to Emma, knowing the blonde was right: it was the best plan they had.


	3. Chapter 3

_***TRIGGER WARNING***__ for some bloodshed caused by a knife (it may be evocative of cutting for some), but it is consensual, oddly compassionate, and used for the purposes of a spell. Also, brief allusion to memories of rape._

* * *

Henry had downed Gold's protection potion amidst strident assurances from his adoptive mother that he would not pay the price of this magic: she would. His parents had argued briefly, his birth mother insisting that she could just as easily do so. Charming had - somewhat timidly, Henry noted gleefully as the potion clung to the sides of his esophagus and rapidly expanded from his belly throughout all his limbs - stepped between the warring women, breaking the spell that the fierce contact between their eyes had cast over the entire shop.

"So what's the next part of the plan?"

Both women jumped slightly as the man's voice swept over them. Regina looked away first, trying to force herself to accept that the blonde wasn't trying to take control away from her. _Was she?_

Emma's words were soft, dancing apologetically from newly moistened lips. "Regina, I'm sorry, but you're going to need to tell me about you and Cora so I can play the part convincingly. We're not going to be able to risk being seen together for a while after this: we've gotta do it now."

For a moment, Emma thought the older woman was going to weep in frustration that she had to reveal her deepest secrets to a woman whom she'd convinced herself was her worst enemy mere weeks ago. But tears didn't come. Regina - ever with perfect posture - straightened her spine more than Emma had imagined possible, regally raising her neck and demanding imperiously, "The room."

To Emma's - and, a bit, to Regina's - vast surprise, Charming, Snow, Henry, and even Gold heeded her command, Snow's face a mask as she guided Henry into the exterior of the shop by the shoulders and Gold trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smirk.

* * *

An almost painfully pensive silence arose between the women. Regina inhaled deeply and motioned for Emma to sit on the bed that David had laid upon while under the Sleeping Curse. Emma cocked her eyebrow questioningly and perhaps a little hopefully. Regina rolled her eyes.

"Honestly, Ms. Swan, if you can't be adult about this, I don't know how I can expect - "

"Whoa whoa whoa, Regina. Stop." Emma took the older woman's hands into hers, shocking herself with the gesture. She breathed deeply, shakily. "Tell me what you need to tell me."

To her dismay, the former Queen shook her head. "I don't have the time to tell you. I have to show you."

Emma's brow furrowed in confusion. Regina tried not to reflect on how adorable it was. "I don't..."

"I am going to directly fill your mind with my memories. The process will link our souls momentarily. I will need my own blood to be directly in contact with yours, I'm afraid. The back of your hand will do. And the magic will need to flow two ways: I have never done this particular spell, but if you sit still, remain quiet, and open yourself to me - just as you did to my instructions when you magicked us to Henry - I'm confident that the magic will flow properly between us." Regina relayed all of this with as much forced detachment as though she were merely giving the other woman driving directions. Emma blinked as Regina searched mildly through Rumpelstiltskin's desk for a small knife. Finding one, she sat next to Emma, exuding a false sense of calmness.

Emma eyed the blade warily. She cleared her throat. "And will you... will you see my memories, too?"

"Since I am initiating it, this spell will only work one way, Ms. - - Emma. Are you ready?"

Emma nodded slowly as Regina casually made a cut in the fleshy part of her own palm, reddening the blade. Emma flinched and her eyes filled with compassion, remembering the scalding of the wraith's mark, which had faded but was still scarred onto the older woman's hand. Unbidden, her eyes flooded with tears at seeing this woman bleed.

Regina took note of Emma's reaction with awe. "It's only a bit of blood, Emma," she whispered. To Emma's surprise, the brunette flipped the knife over gracefully and offered it to Emma, handle first, refusing to be the one to cut her.

The blonde grimaced as she etched a small mark into the back of her left hand. The look of pain in Regina's eyes shocked her when she looked up.

"Alright?" Regina asked quietly. The younger woman nodded.

The former Queen took the Savior's hand into hers, placing her own cut palm on the back of Emma's sliced hand. As their blood settled together in a wet union vaguely reminiscent of their cum mingling between each others' legs, Emma felt a jerk in her lower back. Her eyes widened as she felt acutely as though she were being swept away, up and up and sideways and up, then rapidly falling, falling, falling, Gold's shop disappearing in spicules of light as an idyllic country house, complete with a broad pasture and stables, assembled itself, blade of grass by rapid blade of grass, before her eyes.

She didn't need Regina's tightened grip on her hand, light-years away in Gold's shop, to tell her that she was looking at the place where Regina had grown from being a curious infant, to a vivacious girl child, to a passionate tomboy teenager, to a broken young woman, to the Evil Queen.

* * *

The next few moments - or was it hours? days? years? - passed Emma by in a blur. Scenes of Regina's life passed before her in a flash, sentences and hours and days and experiences hurtling before her incomplete and fragmented. Somehow, however - she hazarded a chaotic guess that it was the magic of such intimately direct communication - she understood everything that was blazing before her eyes as deeply as though she had experienced them right alongside Regina, _as_ Regina.

The anger that she had been born a girl, from both mother and daughter, the first because it was so much harder to gain power as a woman, the second because she was only allowed to ride as she wished at the risk of being wrapped with tight black belts and hoisted, terrifyingly precarious, into the air, belts stymying the flow of oxygen through her body.

The rage of her mother the first time she was discovered in the kitchen, learning to cook from the servants, with whom she had formed quite intimate friendships, especially with the young daughter of her mother's porter.

The fire-hot slashing of Cora's fury onto the side of Regina's mouth, a thin line above her upper lip splitting open and pouring thick blood onto her bed, a stain which Cora refused to allow Regina to wash out, the better to remind her not to commit such craven transgressions as reading more than befit a woman of her status, in open defiance of her mother.

The first time she made love to a boy, his arms trembling in the loft above the horses' home, hay sticking into her back until he lovingly placed a saddle cover under her warm and eager body, until she flipped him over joyously so she could explore their union and her own desires from a different perspective.

His heart becoming dust in her mother's hand. Her tears, her grief. Snow's betrayal. Her meeting with Rumpelstiltskin, her training, her banishment of her mother.

The wedding, her forced smile, her carefully suppressed mixture of fury and comfort as her stepdaughter wrapped her arms around her new mother happily.

The countless times she didn't want to have sex with the king, but had to do his every bidding.

Her tears, shed often, shed alone. Her desperation when she sent Hook to kill Cora. Her grief at her apparent death.

_Love is weakness_.

Emma became vaguely aware of the hot dampness of Regina's tears falling onto their hands and dripping into her lap, and with a jolt realized that her face, too, was nearly sopping.

Coming out of the memory exchange and slipping back into the corporeality of Gold's office, Emma could do nothing but stare at Regina. She raised her right hand slowly, tentatively, gently wiping the tears off of the older woman's perfect face. Regina tilted her cheek subtly into the blonde's touch. Emma smiled slightly as the older woman mirrored her actions and removed her tears with the soft pad of her thumb.

The two exchanged no verbal words as they rose, both trembling, without realizing that Emma's hand had shifted in Regina's so that they were holding hands more comfortable, and stepped into Gold's exterior shop to work of the next phase of their plan.

* * *

"Emma, how did you imagine we could convince Cora that we believe Regina's guilty?" James' inflection let it be known that he himself had yet to be convinced otherwise, but his desire to show faith in his daughter - even though she had come into the room with red eyes and blood on the back of a hand that was firmly holding the Evil Queen's - forced him to stay his skepticism somewhat.

"We stage a public hearing," she murmured, still reeling from the force of Regina's memories. Regina finished the thought that clung desperately to Emma's throat, refusing to leave. The former Queen's voice was coated in sensual disdain as she addressed her continuation of Emma's answer to the woman who was once the girl she had saved from Cora's runaway steed.

"You need to control your sanctimonious tendencies toward heroism, Snow, and sentence me to death. In front of my son."

"And your lover?" Snow responded evenly, not missing a beat of the women's hand-holding, Emma's insistence on believing the woman, on protecting her. Rage threatened to break the surface of her cool, even accusation.

It took Regina a moment to compose her smirk, but was jarred back to the situation by Emma, pale-faced, murmuring, "Now's not the time to - "

"No, Emma, I think now's _exactly_ the time! Don't think we all can't tell what's going on here. You - you're - " Regina's smirk deepened as Charming looked like he was about to stick his fingers in his ears and start humming, Gold sniggered smugly, and Henry looked at once utterly confused and like Christmas had come early. Snow White searched for the right words to adequately describe precisely what kind of outrage the former mayor was provoking by fucking her daughter.

"Do go on, dear, as we all have nothing more pressing to do than watch you stumble your way through still more accusations about my love life in front of my son, whom I wish to share my feelings with on _my own terms_, a concept you clearly have _never_ comprehended."

Emma, stirred from her shock by Regina's passion, hopeful at the fact that she'd referred to their twisted, nebulous relationship as a "love life," and angered by how right she now knew Regina was, stepped forward towards her mother, squeezing Regina's hand as she let it go reluctantly. She hoped the anger didn't show through too much; her mother had been a child, like Henry. Children make mistakes. _But she killed Daniel_. _No, Cora did. And that's why we're here, making these plans._

"Look, we all have a lot of catching up and explaining to do. But right now, we need to focus. Seems you'll have no problem planning a mock public trial right now. Henry and I have just gotta prep ourselves to be good little Regina-hating actors, and it'll be all set."

Snow grimaced at her daughter, trying not to think about why she was wearing a gray turtleneck that looked suspiciously like Regina's.

"Come on, we've got a mock sentencing to set up. If Whale's any indication, it shouldn't be too hard to whip everyone in this town into a blood thirsty frenzy."


	4. Chapter 4

As Emma had grimly predicted, it had been all too easy to stir the townspeople into a mob; a simple, few well-placed rumors about who had killed Archie - helped by the fact that someone as reliable as Ruby had seen her walking into his office (the town seemed to forget that all to recently, they had all demanded the wolf's blood, as well) - had brought everyone running to the former mayor's mansion where she waited, alone, nervously rubbing her hands together and reminding herself that the words Henry and Emma were going to say to and about her - the ways they were going to look at her - were not how they actually felt. Quite the opposite.

At the familiar banging on her door, she opened it cockily, knowing her mother was somewhere, watching, in the distance, recognizing her mask for what it was: a mask. She was steadied by the knowledge that Emma also knew - intimately - that it was a false front.

She forced a smirk as Emma's faux-angry eyes met hers, at the front of the yelling crowd with Henry.

"Ah, Ms. Swan. Come to rescue me from the bloodthirsty barbarians again?"

"Not this time, Regina," Emma answered loudly, her stance set. "Now we know who you really are, and you're not getting away with it."

Regina's heart pounded unpleasantly as she reminded herself that Emma was acting. _Wasn't she?_

She looked down at Henry - as planned - and willed herself to remember that the pain and betrayal animating his eyes was a lie, put there on purpose to fool Cora, to save her. _Wasn't it?_

"Henry, please. Don't let them do this. I'm your mother." She willed tears into her voice, and found it was all too easy to call them to the surface.

"You're not my mom! You killed Archie! He was my friend! And you're nothing but an Evil Queen, and I never want to see you again!"

Regina tried in vain to remind her heart not to break at his words. She searched for reassurance, a wink, a gesture, in his eyes, indicating that he didn't mean what he said. She found none.

"You won't have to, Henry." Charming's ever-annoying voice drew her eyes up to his as he backed her against the same pillar that Emma had saved her from. _Let her go, let her go! Let her GO!_

She didn't have that to fall back on this time. This time, no one would rescue her.

James raised his voice loudly, eyes not leaving Regina's as she began to shake, unable to keep convincing herself that they didn't really want to hurt her. Maybe it had all been some plot by Ms. Swan to ascertain her deepest weakness, to get her to agree to her own death sentence. Everyone had always betrayed her: this could be no different. _Could it?_

"People of Storybrooke! This woman has been a scourge on all our lives for far too long. And now she has murdered Archie, our friend, in cold blood. We've given her enough chances to change: the time for action is now!"

"She can't change," Emma's voice was as low as her sneer, but somehow it carried over the crowd and pierced Regina's heart violently. "She deserves whatever she gets now."

Snow continued. "She needs to be put to death. I had hoped above all others that this would not be the way, but she's proven that we have no other choice. At this time tomorrow, she will be executed. Are there any objections to be raised?"

There was a deathly silence followed by an eruption of cheers, during which Emma roughly moved forward and began forcing Regina into her house: twenty-four hours of solitude in a place she had once hoped to form a home in with her son - twenty-four hours of sheer torture - before she was to die.

"Henry! _HENRY! _You can't let them do this, Henry. Emma. _PLEASE!_"

She thought she saw wetness in both of their eyes as she completed her part of the act. Henry's voice trembled, but it could easily sound like rage, as he raised his voice to shout, "Emma's my mom, and she's right: you deserve what you're going to get!"

The door was barely closed behind Savior and Queen before the latter emitted a wrenching sob.

* * *

"Hey, shhh, shhhh. Henry didn't mean a word of it, Regina. And neither did I. It's all going to be ok. Shhhhh, shhh. I've got you."

Regina didn't shy from Emma's touch as she wept openly into her arms, burying herself in her chest, out of view of her mother and of the murderous crowd.

"We've got to do this fast, Regina: we don't know when Cora will come for you. Go to Mary Margaret's: she'll bring Henry back there to be with you as soon as she can. You'll be safe there: it was a flawless performance, Cora must not suspect a thing." She ran her hands up and down Regina's back comfortingly. _Lovingly?_

The hunted woman took a steadying breath as she backed up from Emma's hold slowly, nodding, acknowledging the sheriff's words. She took her eyes firmly into hers.

"If you let my mother harm you, I will never forgive you, Emma Swan."

The woman in question could do nothing but smile softly as Regina vanished in a puff of purple smoke, tears flowing down her cheeks as she re-appeared in Emma's bedroom in Mary Margaret's apartment.

* * *

And so it came to be that Regina Mills occupied two places at once in Storybrooke.

One - the original - collapsed onto Emma Swan's bed in exhaustion and agonized nerves, terrified of what the next twenty-four hours might bring. And what it might not.

Two - the newly incarnated - in the corridor of the Mills mansion, having taken in all of Rumpelstiltskin and Regina's advice about changing form, admiring herself in the mirror and wondering idly if touching herself in this body would be masturbating or an odd kind of violation of Regina's consent. She decided on the latter. And anyway, now really wasn't the time.

She stared at her new reflection, admiring her beauty for the first time in her life and wondering how Regina - who lived and breathed life into this body every day - failed to see it.

She sank onto the couch that she had sat in when she first had a conversation with the woman whose appearance she had taken on and reflected on the other woman's life. She sorted through every horrid detail of Regina's past with Cora, trying to focus on the good memories - what few there were, like one of watching Cora plant an entire, beautiful garden with the flick of her wrist when she was a very small child - as well as the terrible. She would need them both when Cora arrived to retrieve her broken daughter.


	5. Chapter 5

She had been expecting - no, been waiting for - the puff of purple smoke, but its sudden appearance made her jump slightly nonetheless. She had to struggle to keep her mind clear of the first time she'd seen it, that eerily full cloud working its way up Lancelot's torso to reveal his true identity as Cora. She had to work even harder, however, to keep her mind off of the first time Regina saw that haze, the freshly acquired memory swimming limberly through her brain. She had been about three and old enough to be transfixed in fascination by the wonders - _real magic!_ - her mother could work, young enough to be unafraid.

"My daughter," Cora was breathing, something like tears in her eyes. Acting weepy had never been one of Emma's strong suits, but an odd combination of bailbondsperson training and an intimate knowledge of Regina's complicated - to say the least - feelings for Cora came to her aid. Her eyes glistened as they met those of the woman she was intent on fooling.

"Mother," Emma Swan whispered in Regina's voice as Cora stepped closer to the woman whose life she had ruined.

Cora breathed her smile. Emma's voice threatened to drown in the wetness of her nerves as she knew Regina's would, thrusting all her new knowledge about the history of mother and daughter to use as she asked, "I thought we stopped you. How did you get through?"

"Determination." Cora's voice trembled slightly with the steely note of desperation, hunger, that had always marked her interactions with her daughter. She considered her child's wide eyes and allowed her tone to open slightly. "I had to see you. I needed to tell you that I know why you sent me through the looking glass. And I know why you tried to have me killed. And it's... alright."

"I think it's _not_ alright," Emma answered, her voice trembling, doubting herself and her ability to convincingly have this conversation with Cora.

"I love you. I just - I've always shown it in all the wrong ways. And I never should have made you marry the king." Emma felt Regina's heart shudder in disgust and grief. Then she realized it was her heart that was doing the grieving. _Oh, Regina_.. "I'm so sorry. When you cried over my coffin, it all changed. I knew I had to get back to you. And killing the cricket was - "

"_You killed him?_" It wasn't hard for Emma to make her voice tremble. Her temper was flaring. _Damn, this woman is manipulative. _She took it back to the issue at hand. "You framed me," Emma accused softly, outrage - both her own and that she knew Regina felt tempered by her knowledge of Regina's persistent thirst to be loved just for who she was by her mother - _by anyone _- and by the similarities she reluctantly heard in both Cora's pleading to her daughter and Regina's pleading to Henry.

"Temporarily. So you could see what these people really think of you." Emma desperately fought the desire to defend her love for the woman - desperate to tell Cora what she _really _thought of her daughter - knowing that now was too soon to resist, that Cora believed the entire town - including herself and Henry - had just sentenced her daughter to death.

"You made an airtight case, anyone would have believed it."

"Perhaps, my dear, but would _anyone_ have stormed your home to prepare you for your execution? You owe these people nothing, Regina."

Emma saw her opportunity forming. It was easier than she'd expected to will more tears into her eyes; her nerves were raging. She didn't want to imagine what Cora would do to Regina - to Henry - if this little deception failed. She made sure her voice cracked and heard Regina's voice tremble as she said, "And what would you have me do, Mother? I can't leave town - Rumple hasn't found out how to help us keep our memories - and I won't leave Henry."

Cora chuckled and stepped closer to her daughter. Emma suppressed a shudder, trying to concentrate on the faint scent of Regina's intoxicating perfume lingering in her bedroom.

"Who said anything about leaving, darling? We're going to stay. We're going to win back this town, as Snow won your kingdom from you. Win back your son, as her daughter won him from you."

"How?" Emma asked, hoping Cora couldn't hear her heart slamming against her ribs.

Cora's smile widened. "By getting rid of that Swan girl and her parents, of course. I would do anything for you, sweetheart. And now I get to give you what you've always wanted: you revenge will be so sweet."

_She's really loving this_. Emma tried to turn off her own internal commentary.

"I promised Henry I wouldn't use magic, Mother. I won't break that promise." Emma thanked whatever spirits there might be for letting her know Regina well enough to be pulling this off. Cora seemed to be buying it, so far, anyway. _Not that this bitch hasn't fooled me before_, she chastised herself.

Cora scoffed humorlessly, but Emma knew from Regina's memories that this was Cora about to make a supposedly ironclad argument, not a hand-held ball of flames.

"You want to uphold your promise to him, after he told you that you deserve to die? Come now, Regina, surely I've taught you better than that."

"I tried to have you killed, Mother. Yet here you are, having crossed realms to find me."

"Such readiness towards aggression! I never said anything about hurting the boy, my darling." She wasn't getting the point. Emma decided to ratchet it up. She opened her mouth with Regina's lips and spoke in her best imitation of the tone Regina so often used with her when they fought - _Yes, Ms. Swan, there's a debate - _condescendingly dedicated to helping her understand a glaringly obvious concept, punctuating each word by following it with an arrogantly exaggerated silence.

"Breaking - my - promise - would - be - hurting - him. So would killing his mother and grandparents: surely you've seen how he idolizes them, as much as you've been spying on us."

"_Us?_" _There_ was the outrage Emma had been trying to awaken. "Exactly who are you including in this _us_, Regina? Surely not that insolent Swan girl."

Emma raised her chin subtly in Regina's fearfully defiant pose. Cora needed to try and take her heart. Would declaring affinity with Emma - _with herself?this was too weird _- be both believable to Cora and enraging enough to get her closer to falling into their trap?

Feeling quite arrogant and presumptuous - hoping against hope that if Cora were really talking to her daughter, this conversation would be going the same way - Emma answered, "They've only done to me what you manipulated them into doing. I won't betray them, Mother."

Emma thought she saw a flash of red spark like dragon's breath in Cora's eyes. "_Them!_" She almost shouted the word, but Emma let the outburst steel her features as she knew it would Regina's. "Is it _love_ again, Regina? Have I taught you _nothing?_ You can _have _your son without allowing yourself to succumb to such weakness!"

"I won't own my son, Mother, as you tried to own me!" The tears were back, coating her words with saline that had been building up for decades. Emma was surprised: she hadn't tried to fake the tears. She plowed on, as she knew a hurt and caged Regina would. "Or did you not just apologize for forcing me to marry the king?"

Cora snarled as Emma continued, pouring her own fury at the woman into her words, which somehow maintained the delicate power of eloquence while flowing forth from Regina's lips.

"What is it, Mother? You expected me to break so much I'd be more pliant? More like you? I've spent long enough being you, Mother: that's precisely why it was so easy for you to convince Emma and Henry and the two idiots that I killed Archie, that I can't change, that I deserve to die for everyone else's sake. Because I spent so much of my life being you, being a complete - "

Emma forced herself to stop, somehow knowing that Regina - out of dignity, fear, or a warped sense of love and respect - wouldn't sweat at Cora just to drive home a point. Also, _the two idiots_? _Nice touch, _Emma complimented herself, unbidden. She could hardly blame Regina: they really did have to stop talking about finding each other _ad naseum_.

"Well," Cora began, her falsely cheery voice laced with barely suppressed rage and something at once more poignant - _disappointment? rejection?_ - and more deadly, "it seems my daughter has quite the Savior inside of her."

Emma didn't miss the pun, and felt her insides boil up into her esophagus, remembering as crisply as Regina did the utter pain, humiliation, and helplessness that had slammed their way into the Queen whenever the king her mother had forced her to marry called her to his bedchamber. For her mother to make such a joke was thus cruel, at best.

"And are you going to crush her heart to dust like you did Daniel's?" Emma asked, tears pouring into her voice, praying that she was driving Cora to plunge her hand into her chest venomously. To her alarm, Cora laughed, her voice caressing the bedsheets that her daughter and the Savior had shared a few dozen hours ago, before Cora had killed Archie and unleashed the same vitriolic chaos that she had started so many years before.

"Oh no, I'm not going to crush her heart, dear. But whether you want to or not, you are."

And, still smiling, Cora forced her hand into Emma's waiting chest.


	6. Chapter 6

The defeated woman appeared in her nemesis's living room as smoke unfurled around her, shadowing the tears that had slipped from her eyes as she left Emma's side. She appeared facing the door deliberately, giving herself a moment to lock her face into its mas. There was a rush of movement behind her as Snow White and Prince Charming rushed up to her.

"Regina, thank god," Snow murmured as the hunted woman cocked her eyebrow and turned to face the parents of the woman who was busy saving her life, her expression the ever composed smirk of the Queen she once was.

"Oh, now you're _relieved_ to see me? Please Snow, spare me," Regina cut, lacing her voice with enough disdain to cover the tears.

Charming tried his own luck, having bonded in an odd way with Regina during his wife's absence. "Henry's been inconsolable since we got back from town," he told her softly, gesturing heavily towards her son, who was sitting dejectedly on his grandmother's bed, cross-legged and still wearing his coat and scarf.

What little color had been in the former Queen's face left it as she dashed over to Henry, dignity be damned, who had not seemed to register that she had come in.

"Henry?" she said tentatively, half-expecting him to flinch away from her touch and start yelling at her as he had at the sentencing mere minutes before. And even if he wouldn't yell at her, he certainly wasn't inconsolable for _her_ sake: it was his birth mother courting a fight with Cora that had him so upset. _Wasn't it?_

"Mom!" he emitted in a strangled squeak, leaping in one swift, graceless motion off of the bed and into her arms. "Mom, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean any of these things, I really didn't!"

He was latched onto her life a baby starfish onto a rock in high tide. Tears again flooded Regina's eyes as she patted her son's head, cooing his ragged breathing back into regularity. Red lips buried themselves in brown hair as she nuzzled him and whispered, "Shh, Henry, I know. I know, sweetheart." She knew what was coming, and though Snow and Charming jumped when they made out his garbled, tear-stained words, Regina nodded, having been waiting for them.

"But Archie's dead, Mom! How can he be _dead_? He was so good! What if good can't win, what if Emma's just going to die too, and what if Cora hurts you?"

"I won't let anyone hurt Emma, Henry," the former Queen told him steadily, though her heart was quaking violently. "And as for Archie, honey, well... Sometimes bad, even horrible things, happen to good people. That doesn't mean all is lost. Archie wouldn't want us to lose hope, Henry."

Snow and Charming marveled as his breathing slowed somewhat and he buried his face deeper into her chest, calming himself with her appley scent, spiced today with something new, something Emma. He smiled gently. His stomach roared. He looked up shiftily as Regina cocked a questioning eyebrow at him. "I didn't eat anything yet today," he admitted.

Regina snapped a death stare at her son's grandparents. "We tried while you were with Emma, he refused!" Charming defended almost petulantly, his hands in the air as if to offer proof of his innocence.

Swallowing slowly, and thinking bemusedly how lucky Charming was that he so looked like Emma at that moment, Regina kissed Henry on the head and detached herself lovingly from his grip, walking with authority past the two idiots and into the kitchen. Rummaging through shelves, Regina began finding the ingredients she sought, and laid them out on the counter.

"Pancakes, Henry?" she called over her shoulder. "Your mother wouldn't want you to wait for what will undoubtedly be an obnoxious tale of her grand victory on an empty stomach."

Henry smiled widely, noting how Regina had referred to Emma. He was still horribly sad about Archie and worried near to death about Emma, but if he had been reading his moms right for the past few hours, maybe they had a chance at getting through this as a family. With that hope, he bounded into the kitchen like an abandoned puppy, found again.

* * *

She had expected pain, but hadn't expected the pain to feel different in Regina's body. It was. The changes Emma had magicked onto herself were more than cosmetic; she had transformed her very cells to be like Regina's, and they hurt like Regina's, too. The pain was exquisite, more focused than Emma remember feeling when Cora had reached into her chest the first time. The blood surrounding Cora's fist became so hot that she wondered wildly what would happen if it evaporated. Knives, still exquisitely sharp, but dipped in fire that brought them close to their melting points, were slicing her capillaries open from the inside out. She felt Cora's fingers tighten around her vulnerable organ and pull.

Cora spoke, her voice passionate but also frighteningly casual, considering that she was about to sever a young woman's heart from its attendant vessels. "I know who you are, Regina. And who you will always be. _My daughter_. I'm simply going to help you remember."

"No," Emma groaned, her eyes screwed shut in pain as Cora tensed her arm, about to wrench out her heart like pulling a reluctant tooth from its gummy bed.

Their eyes met. Cora screamed as she detected a hint of green in her daughter's eyes as her hand slammed unsuccessfully against the inside of her chest, unable to yank out her heart.

Emma focused all of her thoughts on the woman she was enduring this pain for, her magical control over her appearance slipping away. As brown hair lightened like sunlight into blonde, Emma forced her voice to work, croaking at Cora in a vocal blend that was a somehow erotic combination of hers and Regina's, emphasizing every word: "_Love. Is. Strength._"

Cora's infuriated yell faded slightly from Emma's ears as she was blasted backwards, out of Regina's bedroom and down the hall, thrown by the intensity of the pulse of magic that Emma had sent rippling out of her body. The Savior once again looking very much like herself, rushed over to the woman who had tried to destroy her lover, in love, sliding the parchment Gold had given her out of her back pocket as she did so, unfolding and blowing on it before Cora could recover from the blast.

The words Emma had chosen to write were words she had never spoken. Gold told her she must choose wisely, that the wrong words would create an ineffective or grossly misshapen spell. The letters needed to spell "I love you, Regina," peeled off of the parchment as she blew on it. The ink lifted effortlessly off of the parchment as though each letter had been waiting for years to be freed from its fibery restraints and dance, contorting and writhing freely in the air between the powerful women, eagerly working their way towards and unmoving Cora, seeping into her skin and glowing in the ecstasy that was drinking her magic, draining it from her blood temporarily, like water from a river.

Emma smirked without joy as Cora's magically incapacitated form lay before her on one of Regina's precious rugs. "You wanted to see your daughter? You will. But don't expect to make any more headway with her than you did with me. You didn't break her, Cora. Her family wouldn't allow it."

Green eyes frosted with defiance as she tore into her pocket, flipping open her cell phone with agitated flare and noting the irony of the surreal mixture: she'd just subdued Cora with magic, and was alerting Regina with a piece of technology. She blinked rapidly as she waited for Regina to pick up.

* * *

Henry was glomming down the last of his star-shaped pancakes when Regina's phone rang. The entire apartment tensed at the sound.

"Emma," Regina breathed into the expertly, immediately, visibly desperately opened phone. Her face broke into the widest smile Henry had seen since Emma brought him up from the mines. Unscripted, abandoned, and full of pure relief, he thought he saw in his other mother's face something he didn't think he'd ever seen before: love, for someone who wasn't him. _Could it be?_

"Oh, thank god," Regina murmured passionately. "Are you alright? You must be in such pain." She murmured this last sentence low enough for Henry to miss it, grave sadness crossing her face as the words slipped through her lips. More suffering that she had caused. Even in her redemption, she was inflicting agony to be born by those she lov - well, by others. Would it - _could it? _- ever stop?

"I'll be right there. Oh, and Emma -_ thank you_." She bent at the waist before Henry, ignoring the Charmings as she hung up the phone.

"Henry, she did it. And she's just fine, but I need to goto her and - and deal with my mother. But Emma took away her power, Henry: it'll be alright."

"Are you going to kill her? Your mother?" Henry asked softly. Snow and Charming leaned in none-too-subtly, quite liking to know the answer themselves.

Somewhat absurdly, all Regina could see was the glistening forest of Emma's eyes as she hesitated slightly. "No," she said definitively to Henry. "I won't be the cause of any more deaths, Henry. But I know something my mother doesn't." Mother and son leaned towards each other conspiratorially. "I can use all that fairy magic I absorbed from the portal - it's still inside me - to take away her magic _forever_."

Without waiting for an objection or demand for further explanation from the local royalty, Regina tweaked Henry's chin affectionately, kissed him lightly on the nose, and vanished.


	7. Chapter 7

Regina appeared smoothly at Emma's side, relief at observing her safety with her own eyes forcing her fears of seeing her mother again to subside. Somewhat. Her eyes carried to the floor where Cora lay: Emma seemed to have propped her, momentarily stilled by the combination of Emma's own magic and the squid ink, on a pillow she'd grabbed from the guest room. Her heart warmed, unbidden, at this gesture.

"Mother," she stated by way of greeting the woman she hadn't seen since her teenage years.

"Regina," Cora answered silkily. "Your woman knows you well: her words and stance were absolutely identical to yours. How _romantic_."

Regina felt rather than saw Emma roll her eyes as she knelt in front of her mother. "Why are you here, Mother? And why did you murder Archie? He was a good man," Regina found herself asking. She held up her hands at waist level before Cora could respond. "No. Don't. I already know. You wanted me broken." Her heart was breaking, but her practiced voice refused to indulge the woman who was now chuckling.

"Well, apparently your _family_ won't allow that, Regina. I must say, I didn't expect you to become quite so sentimental in my absence. And with a _woman!_ You always were the rebellious tomboy - "

"Enough, Mother!" Regina blanched as Emma barely suppressed an adorable snort. "You told Daniel that parents must be prepared to do anything for their children. A few days ago, I absorbed decades worth of fairy dust for mine. And now you're going to do the same for me."

"Regina, darling, you know what fairy dust does to our magic - "

"Not _our_ magic, Mother. _Yours_. You killed and slaughtered in my name, but I refuse to leave the same example for Henry. He doesn't deserve it, just as I never did."

"Regina, what are you - ?" Emma asked softly.

"Dissolving her magical abilities. Permanently." Emma's eyes widen as she saw slight panic, for the first time, shift the syrupy gleam in Cora's orbs.

"Regina, please, be reasonable - "

"_Reasonable_?" It was Regina's turn to scoff. "You want me to be _reasonable_, Mother? _Reasonable_, as you were when you crushed Daniel's heart into nothingness? _Reasonable, _as you were when you gave me this scar?" She gestured stiffly and somehow, elegantly, to her lip. "As you were when you tried to kill me, moments ago, after crossing realms to come back to me, only failing because Emma's heart is stronger than yours?"

"I wasn't trying to kill you, sweetheart!" Cora had found her opening, she knew, and she was milking it like a jaguar mesmerizing its prey with its beauty before going for the throat. "I was trying to help you. Ms. Swan was babbling about things that would only weaken you, Regina, and as I thought she was you, well... All I wanted to do was remind you of where the path to your happiness truly lies. I wanted to guide you there, not kill you."

Regina had frozen like a baby gazelle, just born and already learning to walk, staring into the barrel of a gun: terrified, fascinated, curious. Petrified. Intrigued by the possibilities of what something so shiny, of such magnificent craftsmanship, could reveal.

_Only blood_, Emma knew, and she tenderly, warningly, touched her lover's arm.

"Regina." Her voice was too soft to be a whisper, barely rising above a thought.

Regina's tortured face turned blankly to Emma's, having blinked and gasped slightly at the sound of the other woman's voice. Emma's cadence undulated violently as she blundered through what she knew Regina needed to hear.

"Henry and I can give you all the happiness you ever dreamed of, Regina. And more. I'll never be Daniel, but I don't need to be: I remember everything you do about him, Regina, and I'm not out to take his place. But I know he'd want you to love again, to be happy. I - I - I'm in - damnit, I'm not good at this - I love you, Regina, and I'm never going to abandon you. Or Henry. I know what that feels like, and I'm not gonna run from this. From you. If you want me."

Both women were breathless and their eyes were locked together with no key. Tears threatened to leak from the blonde's own eyes as she reached up and wiped the liquid saline tenderly off of Regina's cheek. The brunette, suddenly a young woman again, smiled at this and brought her hand up to meet Emma's on her face.

Neither woman noticed the electrically blue charge that momentarily illuminated Cora. The ink's power had worn off, now that Emma's secret words had been spoken, taken out of the written realm and into that of the spoken declaration. Cora's rage fluoresced as her powers surged back through her blood. She watched her daughter melt into the Swan girl's hands and fury filled her, accompanied by a heart wrenching fear that she had - despite all her efforts - lost her daughter forever.

"_No!_" Cora shouted as she shot every ounce of fire she had in her veins into Emma's body, irate that this woman was so easily wrenching her daughter away from her as Regina screamed and tore in front of Emma, grinding Cora's magic to a halt with her own and pushing back against it with everything she had, fire she was producing taking on the emerald sheen of Emma's eyes. Sweat shimmered across her forehead as her magic forced Cora's back into her fingertips, their eyes interlocked as they matched their wills, their passions, their loves, their fears, streaming them into their jets of fire, daughter's overpowering mother's as both women ignored the pain of betrayal. Regina reached deep within her to where she'd buried it and drew out the fairy magic, pouring it into her mother until she had nothing more to give. She knew because she could sense it magically and because of Cora's defeated shouts of outrage that she had done it: she had successfully stripped away Cora's magical abilities, dissolving the magic that flowed through her blood with the quenching fairy magic, channeled so passionately from her own blood into Cora's.

But still she had lost. There was a thud behind her as Emma crumpled to the floor. Cora laughed humorlessly, mourning the loss of her daughter's love, as Regina screamed, fearing the loss of hers.

Emma's heart stopped beating before her head met the carpet.


	8. Chapter 8

"I tried to teach you, Regina: _love is weakness_," Cora explained distantly as she watched her daughter cradle the Sheriff's body, rocking to and fro uncontrollably.

"_NO!_" the younger woman sobbed strongly, fiercely. Her hands caressed Emma's face, took in her closed eyes.

"Mom? _MOM?!"_ Mother and daughter both flinched as a shout came from downstairs. A pair of small feet were pattering up the stairs rapidly as two pairs of larger feet followed breathlessly in the child's wake.

"Emma, he snuck out, we couldn't catch - "Snow's words died on her lips as she took in the sight that awaited her, her husband, and her grandson at the top of the stairs.

"_Emma?!"_ she squeaked as Henry sprinted forward and Charming roughly grasped the banister, his knuckles stretched white, matching his face as he tried to remain somewhat upright.

Henry dropped to his knees next to his mothers, ignoring Cora as he bore his youthful brown orbs into Regina's. She waited for him to tell her it was her fault, to accuse her of killing the woman who loved him so deeply it had saved him, broken the entire town's curse. "Mom," he began, his voice dripping with tears that steamed holes directly through her heart, "you have to kiss her." No accusations, just a plea. Regina felt her heart tear into millions of irreparably bloody pieces, breaking apart in all the spaces Henry's tears had burned.

"Oh Henry, I can't - " Memories of trying and failing to kiss life back into Daniel screamed through her veins.

"Kiss her, Mom. Save her. Please. You can do it. _I believe in you_."

Regina forgot to breathe until Snow White's voice called her back. "You love her, Regina. Admit it to yourself, then kiss her. Save my daughter, Regina. Please." Her tone was oddly detached, as though she were floating, drifting, watching from above.

Regina swiveled soaking eyes to Emma's closed ones. Even Cora held her breath as the former Queen tenderly caressed the hair out of the blonde's relaxed face, brushed her thumb gently across slightly parted lips, licked her own, and slowly bent down to kiss the woman she was forced, by death, to admit that she loved.

The instant their soft lips met, a pulsating beam of golden, healing magic coursed into Emma's body from all entry points, rebounding on itself deep in her core of being before careening outwards in a concentric wave that was punctuated by the younger woman's subtle gasp for air.

Regina smiled as Cora winced and Henry cheered. Emma stared up at her Savior in something akin to reverence. Her voice was low, disbelieving. More hopeful than anyone had ever heard it. "You... _love_ me?" she asked.

"Evidently so, Emma Swan," Regina replied joyfully, her voice dancing a blissful union between tenderness and salaciousness, smiling against her Savior's lips as the blonde wrapped her arms around Regina's neck and gently pulled herself up into her embrace as strong, supportive arms held Emma's back and skimmed light fingers through the tips of her golden hair.


	9. Chapter 9

_Okay folks, it's been a fun ride, but this is the last chapter of this adventure! _

_I hope you enjoyed, and thank you so, so much to those of you who stuck with me and even reviewed, especially __**Korderoo **__and __**Writer-Monkey-Esq**__, for all the inspiration and support. _

_Oh, and because I love you all (and Emma & Regina) so much, this chapter is rated M for sexyfuntimes. ;)_

_Enjoy the journey!_

* * *

Snow White cleared her throat as Charming's face took on the hue of Emma's red turtleneck - which come to think of it, looked suspiciously like Regina's - telling herself she didn't want Henry to see his mothers kiss like that - did Regina's tongue just slip into Emma's eagerly opened mouth? - but in reality not wanting to see it herself. The interlocked women ignored her, and she had to admit that Henry seemed delighted by this happy turn of events.

Regina's hands, still firmly holding Emma's tired body up to her, slid under the blonde's shirt, exploring the dip in her lower back, as Emma's hands tangled in the older woman's hair, swiping her thumbs tenderly across Regina's heavily colored, heated cheeks, groaning as their tongues met and the softness of Regina's swollen lips sent waves of ecstasy through her entire body.

Snow cleared her throat again, louder this time, Emma's groan having shocked her back into mother mode. All of her instincts told her to send Emma into a tower, grounded, but knew the time and place for that was gone. And good luck keeping these two apart now. But her none-too-subtle cough seemed to rouse them from their own little universe for now, Emma blushing deeply as she remembered that they had an audience.

Regina merely cocked an eyebrow and trained her darkened eyes on Snow White. "If Emma tells it right, Snow dear, you required a great deal of _rest_ after your ordeals in the Enchanted Forest. Do you really mean to deprive your daughter of the same?" Snow reddened deeply and seemed, to Emma's surprise, completely chastised. She tried to suppress a grin.

Charming opened his mouth to object, but no sound emerged. He closed his mouth and tried again as Emma shook with embarrassed, silent laughter into Regina's arms, pulling Henry into the jumble of limbs and rapidly beating hearts.

"And what are we going to do with Cora?" If he ignored the reality, maybe something would change and it wouldn't be real anymore, he reasoned.

Regina sobered, her hands stilling on Emma's back and Henry's hair. She shifted to face her mother, who had watched them kiss with sorrowful and almost voyeuristic fascination, as though - perhaps - understanding at last what it was she had ripped away from her daughter.

"My mother no longer has her magical abilities, and no one in this town has either the interest or ability in helping her restore them. I doubt she'll be able to, anyway: the magic I poured into you is terribly strong, Mother, and even you would only gravely risk your own safety to try to counteract its effects on your abilities."

"Still looking out for me, my daughter?" _She never quits, does she?_ Emma wondered to herself.

"Merely setting an example for my son, Mother," Regina deadpanned. "Granny will undoubtedly put you up," she continued, "until you can find a more suitable place to live. You never knew what power meant without magic, so without it, I'm sure our Sheriff won't have a problem keeping you in check if you decide to abuse my decision to not lock you away."

"And you're sure that's your decision to make, Regina?" Snow dared to ask, as free of hostility as she could manage.

"_Yes_," Regina answered as she turned threatening eyes on Snow White, surprised to hear that hers wasn't the only voice to answer in the affirmative. Emma had also said yes. Firmly.

Snow merely blinked and raised both her eyebrows at Emma momentarily. She nodded absently, looking away.

Emma grimaced. She didn't relish upsetting her mother like that. But she refused to change the way she worked just because she now knew who her roommate had been all these months.

Desperately needing something to do to get his mind off of the idea of the Evil Queen's tongue down his daughter's throat - and his daughter _enjoying_ it - David finally left the top of the stairwell and offered a hand to Cora, gingerly stepping over Emma and Regina's still entangled forms. "Come with me," he said, all princely business again.

"Oh, how _Charming_," Cora responded sulkily as everyone else in the room rolled their eyes, Henry in a way that was amusingly similar to Regina's eye rolls.

* * *

Emma's cell phone chirped. She glanced around apologetically and detached herself reluctantly from Regina and Henry's arms. Testing her legs, she stood up tentatively as she answered. "What's up, Belle?"

"He _WHAT?!_ Are you serious?!" She let out an uncharacteristic whoop and kissed Henry's head. "How did you?... _Hook?!... _Are you alright? Hook's a real - oh, _nice!_ Did it leave a mark? Nice _job_, Belle... Take out his hook, tie his wrists together behind his back, and wait for me to get there. We'll have Whale take a look at him before we figure out what to do with him. Though personally, I wouldn't mind if you messed up his brain a bit. Might do him a bit of good... But he's _alive?!..._You're _amazing!... _Thank you... Yeah... We'll be down there soon."

She hung up the phone before tossing up her arms in ecstasy. "Archie's _alive_!" she proclaimed joyfully. Henry shouted and dove into Emma's midsection for a hug; Regina smiled bittersweetly as she sandwiched Henry and shook her head at the pain her mother had unnecessarily subjected her son to; Snow laughed with relief, hugging Emma's other side; Charming smiled broadly and nodded happily; and Cora took one last chance to plead with her daughter.

"You see, Regina? I didn't kill him, I - "

"But you killed someone else and disguised their body, Mother. We will deal with this. In the meantime, make sure she's comfortable at Granny's, Charming." The Prince nodded, continuing down the stairs with Cora. "Emma, what happened?"

"Apparently, Belle was fighting with Hook and found his ship. That's how Cora must have come over here. When Cora's magic was dissolved, apparently the ship became visible to everyone. Anyway, she slammed a beam into Hook's head and knocked him out, and she found Archie, tied up somewhere in the ship! He's fine, she rescued him, they're on their way to the hospital together."

"Belle's so _cool_! And Archie's _alive_!" Henry chimed. Both of his mothers laughed and touched his face peacefully as he renewed his grip on Emma's waist.

* * *

The party at Granny's that night was better than any ball the Charmings had ever held or been to. Emma refused to leave Regina's side, even to use the bathroom, determined to correct her error from the last time they'd tried this.

When it was time to have desert, Regina and Emma consulted briefly with Archie before disappearing upstairs together, coming down a few minutes later with a reluctant-looking Cora. Most of the townspeople didn't know her, so it wasn't nearly as painful for her as it had been for Regina to walk into this room. Archie swallowed deeply when she walked in, but nodded cordially at her when she caught his eye.

The Queen of Hearts nibbled regally at the pies and cakes offered her as Henry - supervised closely by his mothers - forced himself to tell her a little bit about what he was learning in school. She seemed awed that these people hadn't killed her, let alone invited her down for desert. She told Henry some stories about horses at her father's mill and exchanged complaints about the hierarchy of fairy politics with Grumpy before declaring herself tired and retiring for the night.

Despite the caffeinated, sugary beverages that Emma and the Charmings had insisted on allowing Henry to down, it wasn't long before his head was drooping onto Emma's shoulder, breathing slow and steady. Regina grimaced and slipped out of the booth the three of them had been sharing.

"Well, good night," she said softly to Emma. "Thank you for a wonderful evening, and well - for everything."

Emma blinked rapidly at Regina's defeated, retreating back, utterly confused. Realization hit her like a tidal wave. "Regina, wait!" She glanced desperately at her parents, who were flirting shamelessly next to her, perhaps their playful form of revenge for what they'd seen earlier. Understanding without words, Snow stepped over to the booth so Emma could get up and Henry could rest his head on Snow instead. Touching her mother's arm briefly to indicate her thanks, Emma quickly caught up with Regina, who had paused without turning around.

"Where're you going?" Emma asked. She found herself breathless again, almost drowning in deja vu.

"Home," Regina answered simply. "Henry's falling asleep, and I assume you'll be taking him to your home any moment now, so I thought - "

"I think Henry'd like to be with both of his moms," Emma said, glancing over Regina's shoulder at Archie, who was talking to Doc - _MD from an axe and PhD from a curse, what a pair_ - and smiling encouragingly at her, having intuited what was going on.

Regina's eyes became saucers. "I... I thought you weren't sure that would be best," she countered faintly.

Emma looked away, embarrassed of her previous hesitation. "Well, I'm sure now. If... um... If you'll have us, I mean."

Regina blinked. Emma swallowed hard. "Him. _Him._ Henry. If you'll have _him_. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to assume - "

The corners of Regina's perfect mouth twitched subtly. "I kissed you back to life this afternoon, Emma. Do you think I wouldn't want you in my home after that? I may not know how to love very well, but surely you believe me capable of consistency."

Emma smiled, the image of happy nervousness, just as she'd smiled the last time they'd had a party at Granny's and she went out after the dejected woman.

"But why did you start to leave?" Emma needed to know.

"I told you, Emma. You'd said you didn't know if Henry staying in my house even for a sleepover would be best, so I just assumed."

"But that was before."

Regina nodded. "I also... I assumed that you would want to stay with your parents. After all these years... I took that from you once, Em. I'm not about to take you from them again."

Emma's eyes flooded with tears, but her smiled broadened, if anything. "They're not going anywhere, Regina. And I... I've always wanted to live with a family. _My_ family. And you're my family just as much as they are."

The women were unaware that everyone in the diner, save a dozing Henry, was watching the women's teary, nervous smiles tentatively grow as they stared at each other, speaking more with the sparkling in their faces and their open, youthful body language than their words ever could.

"Come home with me, Emma?" Regina sounded like her teenage self, asking Daniel to marry her, all the realms open before them. Emma, still with Regina's memories firmly in her mind, melted at the intimacy of that knowledge, of the invitation.

"Help me get our son," the younger woman responded, so softly that their audience had to lean in to hear.

Wordlessly, the two women collected Henry from Snow, Regina fussing over his coat and scarf, layering them over him like a blanket as Emma scooped him up, her arms under his butt and his head on her shoulder, carrying him as she never got to do when he was a baby. His hands buried themselves into the soft sweater she had borrowed from Regina, clasping onto her like a baby koala onto its mother. Regina couldn't help but kiss Emma's lips as Emma mouthed her good nights to a stunned Charming and Snow, to a thrilled Ruby, and to a highlybemused Granny.

* * *

The women hesitated at the top of the staircase, both remembering the events of earlier that day. They glanced at each other for strength and Regina opened the door to Henry's room for Emma. The younger woman smiled: Regina _had_ kept it especially nice for him. Regina pulled back the covers to Henry's bed so Emma could lay him right down, smoothing his hair out of his face as Regina pulled off his shoes and socks. Regina went about the room turning on her son's various night lights, star simulators, and lava lamps. The effect was soft and beautiful - much like the woman herself - and Emma beamed as she kissed Henry good night. Regina mimicked her actions, lifting the covers over him and whispering her love into his sleeping ear.

They tiptoed out of his room and shut the door, but not before they heard Henry call after them, "I love you guys. I'm glad we're all home together."

Regina's jaw dropped, wondering if he had feigned sleep to force Emma and Regina to make a decision about going home together, and her glance at Emma showed that the blonde was thinking the same thing.

"Sneaky bastard," Emma murmured affectionately. Regina smiled.

"Come to bed, Emma," she whispered, sauntering sexily in the direction of her bedroom. _Their _bedroom.

* * *

They shut the door delicately and took in each others' essence as Regina swished her hand gracefully through the air, lighting the candles that were scattered across the room with a simultaneous hiss of wicks and gorgeous glow. Emma raised her eyebrows slightly. Regina smirked softly. "I don't think Henry would mind. Do you?" She asked the question with less confidence than she'd uttered the statement, and Emma smiled at the adorableness of her insecurity. She stepped into Regina's space and slid her hands down her arms until she was holding the older woman's hands in hers.

"I don't think he'd mind one bit," she answered as she brought her lips down to Regina's intoxicating collarbone. She kissed her way across the fragile bone up to her shoulders, reveling in the ways Regina's breath was already quickening and her body gracefully arching into hers.

"Good," Regina breathed as she tossed her neck back to grant Emma access to the sensitive flesh lining her throat. The younger woman kissed, licked, and nipped her way up to the older woman's jaw, drowning in the way Regina was moaning her name. _How could someone like me do this to a woman like her? How could _I _be the one to make her come undone?_ She had no idea, but she wasn't going to give it up for anything.

The Savior's lips found her Queen's and they drank each others' breath, Emma sliding her tongue across Regina's reddened mouth as Regina disentangled her hands from Emma's hair so she could skate down her body to slip her hands under the blonde's sweater and shirt.

It was Emma's turn to moan as soft, strong hands found hardened nipples, smoothing away the red material that was her bra as the older woman palmed her breasts and smiled headily into their kiss.

"Bed. _Now_," Regina commanded, Emma willfully complying as she felt herself dripping - already - down her thighs. From the ragged quality of Regina's breath and the way she yanked Emma down on top of her, she knew the former Queen was experiencing the same.

Regina pulled the blonde's face down to hers eagerly, moving intoxicatingly, perfectly, under Emma as she ran her hands down her back, her sides, her waist, groping her ass and bringing it down firmly until their fiery cores met.

Emma almost screamed in ecstasy at the contact, tossing her head back and grinding her hips desperately into Regina's. She looked down at the woman writhing in pleasure underneath her, and she paused mid-motion.

This she was familiar with. Their frenzied, passionate exchanges of energy; the orgasms deeper than any either of them had had before, neither of them admitting it; their wild unions and the even wilder fights that followed; the way they would race to give each other pleasure, to get pleasure, to finish, to leave; to sleep alone.

"Regina, wait," Emma groaned. Regina's eyes snapped open, terrified that Emma was going to tell her she didn't want this; that she'd just done and said all those things for Henry's sake; that when there was an expectation that she'd stay the night, she didn't want it. Didn't want _her_. Only her body.

She stiffened and prepared to toss the blonde off of her, glad she hadn't yet removed her clothes.

"Regina, we've done this before. We've fucked, we know how to please each other. And I love it, I do. I never want to stop doing that. But I - we - Regina, I want to make love to you. I want to _worship_ you. You're better with words than me, so I... I want to show you how much I... I - Regina, how much I love you. Do you want me to?"

Emma's explanation for why she'd stopped was so different than what Regina expected that she still almost spilled the blonde off of her, out of pure shock. The earnesty in the younger woman's eyes stunned her into silence, and she found herself nodding her consent, feeling so loved that she was half-convinced this was all a dream. She desperately hoped it wasn't, and she smiled despite herself at Emma's ecstatic brightness.

"Relax," she implored softly, kissing Regina's mouth gently. "Lay still," she murmured, "I'm not going anywhere."

Emma swung upward, knelt and chucked herself gracelessly backwards off the bed. Her eyes didn't leave Regina's as she shimmied out of her tight jeans, laughing at herself slightly, hoping the candles hid her blush as she bounced around on first one foot, then the other. Regina beamed, keeping any sarcastic remarks to herself. Emma more easily disposed of her underwear, sweater, shirt, and bra and stood naked before Regina for a moment, before kneeling before the bed and tenderly sliding off Regina's heels. She smiled as she kissed her way up Regina's tights to her sexily skirted thighs and grinned broadly at the way her blouse had been lifted slightly above her waist, exposing several centimeters of precious, olive skin to Emma's eager pink lips.

Straddled by her Savior, Regina found herself surrounded by seemingly endless waves of golden locks of her lover's hair. She reveled in Emma's naked body and skated her hands reverently across her bare skin, leaning up slightly to receive Emma's lips upon hers. She felt the blonde's lips curve upwards into a smile as her hands framed Regina's face. The young woman's lips descended gently on first one eyelid, fluttered closed, then the other, as tears began to leak down Regina's face. Emma, alert, traced their descent and kissed them away before proceeding to draw patterns of tiny kisses across Regina's forehead, temples, cheeks, nose, and chin. Saving the most reverential kiss for the scar just above Regina's lip, Emma whispered, "I love you, Regina Mills."

Regina whispered her response in awe as Emma began to unbutton her blouse, kissing every centimeter of newly exposed skin as she traveled her way down Regina's body, noting and giving extra kisses to every birth mark, scar, and stretch mark. Her hands rounded the perfect curves of Regina's breasts, ecstatic that Regina was wearing a front-clasp bra, undoing it gently with her teeth before taking each nipple into her mouth, sucking slightly as her hand worked to give both breasts satisfactory attention. Emma moaned her happiness as Regina arched her chest into her mouth.

The blonde continued her ministrations as she dipped down to Regina's stomach, leaving wet kisses along her waist line as she began to work her tights and skirt off in one motion. Sliding off both tights and skirt, Emma's new mission was to honor Regina's legs, which she did happily, gently tracing her nails up and down Regina's calves as she kissed the pads of each of her toes, trailing kisses up her ankles, shins, knees, thighs. Regina's breath hitched as ecstatic tears flowed freely down the sides of her face, propped up on the pillow Emma had slid behind her head - _when had she done that?_ - and Emma's tongue reached her inner thighs.

Smiling deeply in anticipation and breathing even deeper, Emma worked her way to Regina's core, parting her perfect hair and lips with trembling fingers, placing a kiss on her throbbing clit before working patterns across her cunt, employing tongue, lips, and gentle teeth for the task. She flattened her tongue against her Queen's clit as Regina thrust her hips into Emma's face, giving the woman all the pressure she needed on her clit as she slipped two fingers into her open and waiting cunt.

"_Em-ma!_" Regina screamed, clawing at the bed with her nails, arching her hips up into her Savior's face, bringing one hand desperately to interweave with the blonde's mane, pulling her deeper into her. Emma ground her own hips into the bed as she curved her fingers inside Regina, tongue working desperately against her clit as her fingers massaged the spot she had noted Regina went wild for. Emma loved making this woman wild for her. She certainly felt it herself, as she could feel her own cunt dripping onto Regina's normally immaculate bedspread.

Emma felt the tremors building in her lover's body as her screams tore into the night. Emma moaned against Regina's clit, the vibrations sending full waves through the older woman's body, crashing into her as Emma slid two more fingers into Regina's soaking cunt. With that, the Queen came undone, screaming Emma's name on the shockwave of her climax as her cunt tightened around the younger woman's hand, her tongue firmly maintaining pressure on her clit so as to draw out wave after wave of her orgasm, pulling more and more pleasure out of her lover as she buried both hands in Emma's hair and let her entire body shake with the ecstasy of it all.

The blonde smiled into Regina's soaked curls, gently pulsing her fingers inside Regina a few more times, the longer to draw out her orgasm, before withdrawing stickily moist fingers and placing another kiss on her clit.

Emma crawled up to Regina's level, kissing her chest where her heart lay beneath before kissing her lips perfectly, holding her lover's (temporarily) spent body.

"I love you, Regina," she whispered into her Queen's ear, trying to memorize her relaxed face and calmly euphoric smile.

"I love _you_, Emma," she breathed lightly, nuzzling into Emma's body, feeling more peaceful than she had in years.

* * *

Henry shook his sleepy head. Maybe he'd ask his moms to cast a silencing spell on their room from now on. But he knew - because he'd asked Emma after walking in on his grandparents - that those screams had been screams of extreme pleasure, and he was just happy that both his parents had finally found someone to share such happiness with.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, he heard their moaning start again, this time most of the louder groans seeming to come from Emma. Yep, he was definitely going to ask his moms to cast some sort of silencing spell on their room.

He smiled nonetheless as he shifted to his side and sandwiched his head between his pillows. For the first time, he thought happily, all was well in Storybrooke.


End file.
